Heroic Marines, Jordan C. Haerter of Sag Harbor and Jonathan T. Yale, posthumous winners of the Navy Cross for having saved 150 of their fellows by standing their ground when faced with a barracks-bound truck full of explosives in Ramadi, Iraq, on April 22, 2008, were remembered in Jordan’s Run Sunday.
The 5K race, in its ninth year, was preceded by ceremonies at the foot of Sag Harbor’s Pierson High School during which the late Marine’s mother, JoAnn Lyles, and the Rev. Nancy Remkus were among those who spoke.
In welcoming the several hundred participants, Lyles said that, among other donations, $1,000 Jordan’s Honor awards were given out this spring to four East Hampton High School seniors — Joshua Williams, Jeremy Cabrera, Joseph Cardenas, who have embarked on military careers, and Randy Japa, who is to major in law enforcement and criminology in college.
“We are here to honor Lance Corporal Jordan Haerter and to honor and remember all of the fallen whose sacrifices allow our way of life and our freedom,” she continued. “Your steps today honor them.”
Tom Gillin, the event’s announcer, reminded the participants that Jordan Haerter had graduated from Pierson High, where the start-finish line was, that the bridge to North Haven over which they were to run twice was named after him, and that his grave could be seen on their return at the entrance to Oakland Cemetery.
Remkus said the race was honoring “a true American hero, who gave his life in service to others,” and asked that God “bless each step we take with purpose . . . may we carry forward Jordan’s memory, not just in this race alone, but in the way we live, serve, and care for each other.”
With Edmar Gonzalez-Nateras, last year’s winner, looking on from the sidelines, a fellow Sag Harborite, 19-year-old Justin Gardiner, a Georgia Tech student, topped the field of 335 finishers in 17 minutes and 17.03 seconds, a 5:34-per-mile pace. Penelope Greene of Noyac, a recent graduate of the State University at Geneseo, where she was a nine-time all-American in track and cross-country, was a close runner-up, “a couple of steps behind,” in 17:28.05, thus continuing a tradition of high finishes for women in this race: Paige Duca won it in 2019 and Zoe Quinn, then 42, a mother of four visiting from Dublin, won it in 2018. (Duca should have won it that year had she heeded an “about face” sign on the bridge.) Greene, who may embark soon on a career in the publishing world, was 13th in the 2019 race, as a 16-year-old, in 20:05.43.
Gonzalez-Nateras, who’s to attend Manhattan University (the alma mater of two important figures in road racing, Dr. George Sheehan and Andy Neidnig) in the fall, said his summer cross-country training schedule had prevented him from competing that day, which, given the cloud cover, was a good one for running. Gardiner was third at Jordan’s Run last year, in 17:32.87.
The third-place finisher on Sunday was Neil Falkenhan, a 41-year-old East Hamptoner, in 17:36.58. His 10-year-old daughter, Zoey, was 32nd, in 22:20.65.
